Author Archives: Tobias Schwarz

About Tobias Schwarz

German, turned 30, balding slowly, hopefully with grace. A carnival junkie, who, after studies in business and politics in Mannheim, Paris, and London, is currently living in his hometown of Mainz, Germany, again, working on a phd when he's not too busy writing, composing, or supporting his home side Mainz 05. Turned New Labourite during a research job at the House of Commons, but difficult to place in German party-political terms. Liberal in the true sense of the term. His political writings are mostly on A Fistful of Euros these days. His personal blog Almost A Diary was a predominantly political blog in 2002-2003 but is now usually living up to its name, even though it can also be reached through the promising URL www.ichbindeutschland.de. Other bloglike activiy includes his musicblog www.tapsmusic.de, his musician account at myspace.com (myspace.com/tobischwarz), where you can listen to some of his songs..

Is something happening?

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As we have been able to witness with unfortunate regularity lately, not every election helps move politics forward. Fortunately, some still do.

While Sunday’s regional election in the Austrian state of Steiermark, which was widely expected to be the decisive reason behind the Austrian government’s determination that the treaty opening EU accession talks with Turkey – which were supposed to start with a (now postponed) signing ceremonyat 5pm CET today – explicitly include the option of a non-standard membership or so-called privileged partnership, did not help to overcome the impasse, the by-election in Dresden seems to have shifted the balance of power in the race for the German Chancellory to the extent that Chancellor Schröder told RTL television – before attending a meeting of the SPD’s steering committee this afternoon – that (my translation, German from Spiegel Online) -

“… this is not about me. It’s about my party’s entitlement to lead, and only the party leadership can decide about it. I will accept whichever decision will be made. I don’t want to impede the development of the reform process which I have started or the formation of a stable government for Germany.”

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Dresden.

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The other half of Dresden has voted today. Early reports (based on 60 out of 190 precincts) by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen for ZDF television indicate that voters learnt a lot about the intricacies of the German personalised proportional representation electoral system, by giving the local CDU candidate, Andreas Lämmel, sufficient “first votes” to win a direct mandate but not using their “second vote” to increase the CDU’s share of vote in Saxony to the point where the party would lose a mandate in the state of Northrhine-Westfalia. Instead many seem to have voted for the Liberals – the party apparently received about 17% of the votes.

The current projection would lead to the following Bundestag: CDU/CSU – 226 mandates, SPD – 222, FDP – 61, Linkspartei.PDS – 54, The Greens – 51.

This result would likely weaken Chancellor Schroeder in his struggle to remain Chancellor even in a grand coalition of CDU and SPD. But as nothing fundamental has changed, it is too early to say what will happen after Germany’s national holiday tomorrow. Still, given that Schröder was able to interpret the a-little-better-than-expected result of his party and the much-worse-than-expected result of the CDU and their Chancellor candidate Angela Merkel as some kind of plebiscite in his favor, voters in Dresden have certainly weakened this argument.

Another Grand Coaltion: The Sun of Jamaica.

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Over on Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell – I think somewhat accidently, because I get the impression he believes Germans do *NOT* want to change their distorted labour incentive and tax systems – writes about the fundamental reason for the result of last Sunday’s election.
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Grand coalition under Schröder?

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CDU advertising for SchröderBeing stuck in a traffic jam is probably not the best place to be to blog about the German election. On the other hand, it may well be an excellent metaphor for the result of today’s German elections, which Mrs T sketched below. Hearing the results on the radio, the first thing I that sprang to mind was Goethe – “Here now I stand, poor fool, and see I’m just as wise as formerly.” Well, maybe not quite.
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German Election Primer

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With only one night left to sleep before German voters (about 10 million of whom are allegedly still “undecided”) will be asked to decide about the composition of the next Bundestag, and probably, though not necessarily, about the composition of their next government, Spiegel Online’s English language service kindly prepared a contextualised (links to articles they published on specific issues) primer about the bumpy road this year’s contenders had to take to get into the Chancellery. Useful – and hopefully interesting – Saturday afternoon reading for everone who doesn’t feel too comfortable yet about the intricacies of German politics.

CDU: Screwing up on purpose?

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Ok, now that Edward has already mentioned it, I might as well explain in a little more detail what I meant by saying that “on some level, the CDU might be afraid to win.”

Last Saturday evening, strolling through Stockholm’s Gamla Stan, Edward asked me about my gut feeling concerning the outcome of the German election next week. I told him that, while it was rather entertaining, this campaign has also been confusing – and confused – in many ways, particularly when looking at the CDU. And I believe the confused and confusing campaign the CDU is conducting is even more an expression of the way the German establishment is puzzled about the way ahead than the fact that Schröder “called” the elections a year too early, too early for any of his reforms to have any perceptible impact on the economy, not even in the West.
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